


The Sheen of the Sun

by terriku



Series: sing, brighteyes [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:01:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27678452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terriku/pseuds/terriku
Summary: Under the glare of a sky that never dims, Batai imagines he will find her eyes a discomfort. But they are as sharp and as cold as always, the edge of a knife piercing through the darkness; it makes his heart skip a beat still.Shadowbringers | Ileane, Batai, and the moments in-between.
Relationships: Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)/Original Character(s)
Series: sing, brighteyes [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2024017





	The Sheen of the Sun

Batai reaches out for her.

It is instinctual. He feels the tug on his soul, the by-now familiar voice even if it is too distant to understand. The unknown is calling him, dragging him into it and without thought, he reaches for Ileane.

She turns and grips his hand strong. No tighter than normal, but Ileane has always had a solid strength in her that he finds grounding. _Together,_ he thinks, _take us together_ , and he does not know the shape of a soul even though Urianger and Matoya have tried in turn to teach him, but he thinks: _together, take us together for she is the eagle in the sky of my soul; together or not at all._

So, when he wakes alone in a distant world, Batai stares back at the sky and wonders if he ought to have listened harder or believed what the Sharlyans had said with all their theories and literature. It is only – Batai is a Malqir, a son of the steppe, and the people of the steppe know that some things are beyond the ken of mortal understanding. Urianger might have ten volumes on the nature of the soul, and Matoya might have an entire cave of experiments and formula and thesis, but neither could say what a soul was. Not truly. Batai could not explain it, but he knew. He does not have the words to say it, nor any diagrams to depict it, but the knowing is there.

Ileane had looked up at him without prompting. She had gripped his hand without a single cue or word. Ileane had held tight to his hand, but she’d held him metaphorically too; like an anchor to the world. Batai did not doubt for a second that if she had not been willing to come with him, that nothing in the world could have taken her. But Batai had not even asked and Ileane had answered and together, the unknown had taken them together.

It is no failing of their souls, he thinks, that he awakes alone, face down in the shallows of a lake. But somewhere in the rush of memories, he’d let go and now he was alone in this land he had been called to. The shoreline is purple and the water is clear.

Batai rises. She is there, out there, with their friends or alone again perhaps. She is not waiting – that has never been her nature. But he does not doubt that their paths will cross again.

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to round 3234 of me writing around the Actual Plot. 5 shorts that span the arc of Shadowbringers.


End file.
